Increasing populations of humans and their pets, especially dogs, have resulted in the disposal of animal wastes becoming a serious and expanding problem, especially in urban areas. In an effort to combat this problem, large cities such as New York have enacted ordinances requiring that dogs be leashed and that owners or other handlers clean up feces deposited by their pets. Elsewhere, strong pressures are exerted to induce persons to similarly clean up after their pets in the interest of maintaining an attractive environment and to enable others to move freely about without soiling their shoes or feet.
Numerous devices for recovering and disposing of animal feces and their shortcomings are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,272,116 issued 9 June 1981 to Tufte, Jr. for APPARATUS AND METHOD OF DISPOSING OF PET WASTE AND THE LIKE.
Tufte, Jr. purportedly overcomes the disadvantages of these feces retrieval systems with a kit which is composed of a collapsible container with rigid walls and a spatula which can be used to push feces into the container and then assembled to the container to form a closure. While it may not have the drawbacks of other feces recovery and disposal devices, the arrangement proposed by Tufte, Jr. does have its disadvantages. One is that it is constructed in its entirety of a rigid, thus relatively heavy, stock. This makes the Tufte, Jr. device comparatively expensive and, also, bulky, a common contributor to high shipping costs. These drawbacks are not insignificant because of the large number of containers--365 per year or more --that may be consumed in cleaning up after a single animal and the huge numbers of pets that are kept by law abiding and conscientious persons in environments dictating that feces not be left where they are deposited.
Another salient disadvantage of the Tufte, Jr. device is that its container must be erected and end flaps folded and tapped together before the device can be used. Even this seemingly minor effort would discourage many persons from using the Tufte, Jr. device.
Still other drawbacks of the Tufte, Jr. device are that the tabs he employs do not securely fasten the spatula to the container, and the container is not at all odorproof after it has been sealed. Furthermore, the Tufte, Jr. construction does not lend itself to being sealed and reopened to clean up additional deposits of feces, a feature which is desirable for obvious reasons.
Other devices for retrieving and disposing of feces are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos.: 4,017,015 issued 12 April 1977 to Jefferson for DISPOSABLE BIODEGRADABLE ENVIRONMENTAL ANIMAL FECES WASTE SCOOP AND CONTAINER; 4,138,153 issued 6 Feb. 1979 to Brown for SANITARY SELF-CONTAINED FECAL WASTE CONTAINER; 4,230,354 issued 28 Oct. 1980 to Claras for PICK UP AND DISPOSAL KIT FOR PET ORDURE; and 4,252,356 issued 24 Feb. 1981 to Tokuzumi for BAG FOR PACKAGING ANIMAL'S DROPPINGS; and 4,715,495 issued 29 Dec. 1987 to Henry for DISPOSAL KIT.
Tokuzumi's bag does not require the assembly steps of Tufte, Jr. However, the Tokuzumi device has a drawback which may be sufficiently serious to make the device impractical. This is that no provision is made for pressing the bottom side of the bag against the surface on which feces have been deposited while keeping the bag open so that the feces can be pushed into the bag. This would make the recovery of waste material especially difficult if the bag was employed on an uneven and/or yielding surface such as grass, for example.
A further drawback of the Tokuzumi device is that the arrangement used to close the open end of the bag does not provide a tight seal. As a result, offensive odors and fluid components of the recovered waste material may escape to an undesirable extent.
The container disclosed by Claras has the same disadvantages as the one proposed by Tokuzumi. There is no satisfactory way to both keep the bag open and hold it against the surface on which the feces have been deposited. Also, the Claras container seems to lack any practical way of sealing it, once the waste material has been propelled into the bag. In addition, the Claras construction is relatively complex. As a result, his device would probably be too expensive to use on a day-to-day basis.
Complexity is similarly a drawback--probably fatal--of the Brown device. Also disqualifying the Brown device from a practical viewpoint is its involved mode of operation. For example, the user must manipulate the bag to a considerable extent after it has been filled before it may be sealed. Like others, Brown has therefore disclosed a device with a mode of operation which is complex enough that many persons will choose not to use it.
Furthermore, a twist tie is used to seal the bag once it is open and has been closed. However, no provision is made for making that fastener easily available to the user or for keeping it from dropping onto the ground or being lost, for example.
Another disadvantage of the Brown device is that there is no obvious way of propelling the feces into his bag. Merely engaging the teeth of the shovel member at the front of the bag with the feces as instructed by the patentee would not accomplish this goal.
Jefferson's feces disposal kit is believed by me to also be impractical. Erecting two interfitting boxes, as is required to ready his device for use, would certainly not be acceptable to many, if not most, potential users. Also, these boxes would have to be fabricated in their entirety from a relatively heavy and correspondingly expensive material; and the dies needed to generate the complex blank shown by Jefferson would be expensive.
The Henry proposal would appear to be entirely impractical. There is only the flimsiest of connections between the container he employs and the handle by which that container is manipulated. Consequently, particularly once feces have been loaded into the container, there would be nothing to prevent the container from bending away from the handle and discharging its contents.